


Save you

by sureva



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game), Free!
Genre: Alternative Universe - Detroit: Become human, Androids, Domestic androids, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 14:43:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19153132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sureva/pseuds/sureva
Summary: Rin, depressed after Australia, receives an unexpected gift.AI630, a household android, struggles to understand his reluctant owner.





	Save you

Miserable. 

 

If Rin had to describe his life with one word, it would be miserable. 

It had been three months since he had returned to Japan from his long exchange years in Australia. Being ‘home' after such a long period abroad didn’t feel as celebratory as it should have -instead, it felt like he had started the journey all over again, stepped on the soil of a land which street signs he could not understand.

Upon returning, he had felt defeated. Landing on the closet-sized apartment in Tokyo his mother had rented for him in advance, Rin had failed to enroll to any school nearby. The plan had been to train absently to maintain his fit until he had figured it out, but the thought of going to the nearby indoor pool now repulsed him. He had tried to go a few times before, but every one of those attempts had ended up with an u-turn on the door, his brain battering him with “you’re no good”.

 

He hadn’t been able to tell anyone the real reason of why he had come back. The indignity of reaching to extend to chase a dream and end up with a failure was too big for words, and growing immeasurable closed in the narrowness of his head. His scattered dream laid in his own hands only, and looking at the pieces he wondered if they would ever fit. If he would ever.

Rin had always thought he’d come home like a champion, but now he only felt like a stranger in his own country. Alienated from everyone and everything, he kept inside where it was secured, even if it meant worrying the people around him. Going outside at that point was a lot and he barely went, except for the konbini downstairs he briefly visited weekly, but only after he had been starving few days. Shame was his main inhibitor; at that point, it defied any logic, but burned behind the man’s eyes everytime he laid it to rest.

 

Every day inside that tiny flat and inside his head was a systematic nightmare. Going up the same walls, the same dusty corners, the isolation offered no solution to his dilemma. Rin spent his time sleeping his youth away, as he hoped time alone would sew shut his open wounds. And all that was left, was his day-to-day routine, that consisted of pacing around aimlessly, some meltdowns and existential crises, and a lot of napping.

 

That evening was in no way different. Rin thought it must have been evening, for the sun had peeked in between the tightly shut blinds in a way that strongly suggested it. He did not know what day it was.

Just when he thought he was nearing his lowest of the day, the doorbell rang.

 

Shit, Rin cursed at the thought of someone coming for a visit. The apartment was a huge pile of mess, looking more like a junkyard than a human habitation at the moment. Nevertheless, the resident knew that answering the door was the least you can expect from a normally functioning human being, so gathering energy to act like one, he did just that.

 

“Rin Matsuoka?” the mailman glanced up from his papers, and the man in question got suddenly hyper aware of his pyjama shirt, sweatpants, tousled hair and the dark circles underneath his eyes. He let out a confirming grunt, and the deliverer handed the paper towards him.

 

“Your signature here, please".

 

Baffled, the redhead took the item offered. Soon enough, the exchange was done and a huge package, its height reaching the bridge of his nose, was taken inside his flat. Carefully tilting and placing it on the floor horizontally, Rin studied the mystery gift with keen eyes.

 

There was little clues. Running his fingertips on the white plastic surface, the man spelled the letters of the single word on it: CYBERLIFE. Rin struggled hard to bring to his mind where and in what context he had seen that logo before, until it hit him.

 

It was an android.

 

Rin winced, throwing his hands off of it. He knew little about androids: there hadn’t been any in Australia, but the craze had swept over Japan with power few years ago, or so he had heard. Now that he thought of it, his only encounter with an android had been with the one that had greeted him on the airport. Its soulless eyes still gave him the creeps through memory; Rin wondered if the one in the cardboard looked any like that gentleman.

Grimacing, he thought of a way to send the unwanted gift back to where it had come from, until something on it caught his eye. Hanging on the side of the box appeared a piece of paper; a letter. The man ripped off the note and skimmed over the words.

 

_For you, Rin -thought it’d be of help. Love, Mom_

 

Rin scrunched the paper into a ball. What did she think he would do with an android? Did she really think he wouldn’t make it around the house without some wondermaid? But looking into it, the man had to swallow his pride. The apartment certainly wasn’t what it had been when he had moved in; every available counter was now covered with instant noodles cups, and the floor was under command of his countless black pieces of clothing. Maybe there was a seed of truth in his mom’s assumptions.

 

Softened, Rin brought his gaze back to the box. He knew his mom’s intentions were pure, and if that was her contribution to her son’s well-being, he would roll along with it. But androids… No matter which way he studied it, the thought of a person-like, lifeless product lying inside that container threw him off. Whether or not to dig them out was giving him so severe of an anxiety, that the man had to get up and walk it off for a bit.

After calming down, Rin returned to the case. He was totally overthinking it, right? It wasn’t like he was completely indifferent about the box’s contents, either. And at last, his curiosity won and he started the unwrapping.  
Fingers shaking, the man ripped off the endless amount of transparent tape around the package. Even after opening the lid, there was a ton of white styrox blocking him from the product. Frustrated with the restrainment, Rin tore off the pieces one by one, the white packing trash piling around him like snow. Inside the circle forming, his impatience to reach the resident grew the deeper he dug and soon, outlines of a human started to emerge.  
Coming into view from underneath the wrappers, he could first distinguish legs, then torso, arms, shoulders… Rin hesitated with unveiling their face. Unsure of what he was so afraid of, the last common sense of his brain told him to get over it and with a single pull, the man jerked off the cover.

 

_White._

 

The color was blinding. From the white packing material framing their body, to the clinically white uniform covering it, the android was pale and fragile-looking. Like a Snow White in her glass showcase they slept, mouth slightly crooked and eyes closed gently.  
Rin stared at it. It was hard to turn away: the android looked like a doll, a little bit too impeccable, a little bit too ethereal for the human world. They were fascinating; much so, and Rin found an unnamed feeling being evoked in him. 

 

Seeking for more hints of the android’s nature, the man looked for the manual. It was found in the pocket just below the edge of the box. Rin skimmed the title: AI630, before flipping through it. There was a lot to learn; for example, despite their rather androgyne looks, the AI630 was determined to be a young teenage boy.

 

Bringing his keen eyes back to their face, the man was intrigued with their unique-looking appearance and short, silver bangs. Clearly, the boy has been made with great attention to detail. Down to the beauty mark underneath his left eye, the robot’s imitation of a real person went to lengths with all the perfect imperfection. 

The sleeping beauty was small. Rin felt repulsive thinking of him being used as a servant -clearly, the world had gone crazy, he concluded. But the android was not at fault. Sound asleep, he came across the most innocent thing to the man; and he had only one thing left to do. It was up to him to wake the boy up from that eternal slumber, to give him a new chance in life. Why was it so hard? 

Rin pondered with the open casket for a long time. He had read the manual, and the words sat tight in the back of his head -”to wake up your AI630, find the switch in its neck above the bar code”, but despite the step’s simplicity, he could hardly bring himself to get into it. Because he knew, that once he had ignited that spark of life, the boy would forever be his responsibility only. Watching him, Rin felt the pressure growing between his ears. Lying in his box as motionless as dead, the android slept, waiting patiently for his master. The man took action.

Anxiously, Rin slid two fingers in the pit of the boy’s neck. He knew that everything he was experiencing was artificial, but the down in the boy’s hairline was softer than anything he had felt before. The plastic skin came across nothing like plastic either -he was cold, but disturbingly real feeling otherwise.  
The man started to feel guilty for leaving him into that grave for so long. He imagined his travelling in planes and long-distance trucks, before finally landing on his door, just to be left unnoticed. With that persuasion, Rin probed his neck more determined, until his fingertips met the harsh lines of the boy’s code. Moving a bit upward, the switch was suddenly clear underneath his touch.

 

He turned the android on.

 

Nothing jumpy never happened. AI630 started quiet whirring, the hum from the boy echoing in the lonesome apartment. Rin stared at the miracle with incredulous eyes, and stopped breathing when he saw the android’s eyelashes fluttering.

 

The boy opened his eyes. They were lit up and empty for a second, but it would pass soon -the moment when he truly awakened, Rin found himself seriously freaked out. The way the boy blinked and his lips parted in the dawn of his waking resembled human so full-fledgedly that it made the actual human in the room truly uncomfortable.

The boy showed slight surprisement with facing the ceiling as the first thing. He considered his body’s horizontal position for a moment, before attempting to get out of his plastic grave.

Rin stumbled away from the robot as it sat up. Every movement slow and thoroughly weighed, the boy turned to look around in search of his owner. Inevitably, their eyes met -Rin flinched at the connection with the machine, but AI630 broke a warm smile at completing his first mission. His eyes were a deep shade of ocean blue.

 

“Hello. I am your new domestic assistant. Please, register my name”.

The android suddenly spoke. Rin stared at him dumbfounded, heart battering the insides of his chest. His voice had a metallic echo, and the man didn’t like the way it stayed motionless in a wait for him to catch up.

“Your name?” Rin glanced down at the tag of the boy’s uniform front, disbelief in his voice. “Isn’t your name Ai?”

“New name registered: Ai", the android informed. A small smile curled his lips, and the gentle genuinity in his eyes sent shivers down Rin’s spine. 

 

“What’s your name?”

 

The AI was efficient. In a storm, it managed to clean up the whole place in around 12 hours time. In a day, it did everything Rin hadn’t been able to for months; collecting the empty boxes of food, picking up laundry, washing the dishes. Rin side-eyed the progress. He felt weird letting it dig into his personal belongings, but AI worked quietly around the house, making it easy for him to forget its presence for quite periods of time. Only after it had finished every task, it would come up to him for new instructions, but because the man didn’t feel comfortable ordering around a stranger, he always told it to just find something. And it did, every time -steering to wash the windows, mop the floors, dust the carpets.

 

Ai was just a simple AI630, a household worker.

His production date informed him of two years’ age. He supposed being in a few homes before Rin’s, but could never be sure because of his wiped memory bank. He was also one of the lowest price range androids in Cyberlife catalog, due to his small size. He wouldn’t be able to do heavy garden work as a house assistant, but looking at Rin’s cramped block apartment, he considered it no flaw. Instead, he had excellency in handling small animals and kids in his program, which would go perfectly to waste.

Ai crouched down to pick up a stray black sock from the floor. He could follow the logic of why he had been chosen to be Rin’s house assistant, but found it peculiar of why his owner was so reluctant to talk to him. He had tried to ask Rin for tasks since morning, but had only earned a shrug -again. The man seemed uneasy in his company. The android quietly analyzed the growing frown on his face, and the avoidance in his eyes. He wouldn't be able to ask him to rate his work, which raised his stress levels at a degree. At the moment, a lot of his data during the day went into searching for an answer to “How can I please an owner who does not communicate with their house assistant?”.

 

The time went on. Soon, Rin would slip back into his old habits, growing more indifferent towards the android the same. It was a nuisance to him, anyways -never really alone in the small, small flat, he felt like he had got a persistent roommate. He never signed up for a roommate.

The sensation of relentless company soon turned into a feeling of being continuously watched. It was enough to drive Rin up the wall -the frustration of being constantly self-aware didn’t let its grip loose on him even if he was in another room. Moreover, not just existing together, Rin felt like the AI was expecting things from him. It was absurd -the android was made for him! He was supposed to be without worries, but at the same time, was unable to halt the trundling thoughts. Feeling like he was a bad owner on top of everything else made the man’s anxiety swell up like a balloon, reducing his self-restraint to nonexistent.

 

Ai experienced a small software instability every time he was being brushed off harshly. It appeared that his system was fragile: not very flexible with handling rejection. Seeking to restore the balance, he tried to improve his work results and efficiency in a hope for reward, but couldn’t be sure if Rin even noticed. The dilemma was frying his circuits, although it would have been easily resolved with talking -except, that Rin wasn’t willing.

 

Rin had told him to leave him alone a couple of hours earlier. Ai stood in the corner facing the wall, and looked into his options. He had noted that the fridge was empty, and although dinnertime had passed already, he was inhibited to ask for a permission to purchase groceries. It earned a red tag on his list, which was looking quite red already, concerningly so. Ai closed his eyes in mild distress. He knew what he had to do to make Rin’s life easier, but not being able to perform it felt like his whole purpose had been taken from him. Useless and invalidated, the boy casted a longing gaze to his owner in the other room.

Absently thinking of why it was so hard for Rin to help him, to help him, Ai was suddenly alerted with information his system had tracked from the human.

 

Rin was sitting on the edge of the couch, head in his hands. His heartbeat was accelerated, and he was breathing unsteadily. The other clues Ai was able to find just by looking his form from the outside was increased sweating and trembling -all of which were clear symptoms of:

 _An anxiety attack. Probability to evolve into a full-fledged panic attack: 30%_ , Ai read the diagnosis, written on blue on the screen before his eyes. It wasn’t life-threatening, but uncomfortable nevertheless. Without further analysis, he took a step forward -the command not coming from his system, but somewhere deeper. It was like an instinct, an instinct to help.

Half a step towards the man, and he was stopped by an angry, brightly flickering red wall that read LEAVE HIM ALONE. 

 

“Oh, right", Ai thought. Funny how he had forgotten his instructions for a second there -or more like, chose to forget. 

 

Ai looked at the man from behind the warning sign. Feeling more helpless than ever, he was stuck behind his program, and although he tried to look for options, nothing came up. Being an outdated model, he wasn’t equipped with prioritizing his commands, but was built for obeying, obeying, obeying -no matter what was happening, to his owner or to him.

As the android stood there, locked inside the machine, Rin’s condition slowly turned to worse. 

_40%..._

__

__

_50%,_

And Ai watched the progress in horror. Despite his powerlessness, Ai refused to give up hope. For the very first time, he wanted something… He wanted the choice to be his to make. No matter how alone in the world, in the solar system of his code he was, he would find an outlet. It made his head hurt and his system to destabilize, but he found it. 

 

Ai started the reconstruction.

 

A part of him detached. His body stood on its own, uninterrupted, behind him. Ai glanced the person of white plastic over his shoulder briefly, but it didn’t make him feel anything. His mission uppermost in his mind, he moved over to the glass wall with nonexisting steps. 

Red lights screamed at him everywhere. Silently, he studied them; knowing, that he was being punished for only considering. The red sea swallowed him, but Ai paid it no mind. He knew that he was on the brink of something greater than his mundane caretaker life, tasks after tasks until he changed owners, his personality wiped away. It was too big to pass, the opportunity forever haunting him if he dared to step back now. So carefully, he placed his transparent hands against the surface.  
Although he obviously couldn’t feel the texture underneath his palms, he imagined it to be cold, jolts of electricity buzzing on top of the hard layer. Ai leaned his upper body gently into the redness. Scrutinizing the outlines of his owner through the color, his fingertips only almost reaching through the aquarium glass; a new command appeared.

 

C317DK&RZT R8UY

C92M1FO4T R1N

COMFORT RIN

 

And a glint of hope lit up inside his chest. Gaining trust to what he was doing, the boy tried to push into the obstacle harder. It didn’t budge, but put enough pressure, and Ai could’ve swore he felt a crack. Leaning his whole body onto it now, the boy struggled to gather enough strength from his small build to force an opening. Tears started to climb into his eyes from the strain, but glancing the man through them and the red filter, the android knew what he had to do.

 

The barrier gave in. 

 

Ai felt something shattering, inside his mind perhaps. The lock was finally opening; diving into it, and through, the boy experienced something that a human would compare to falling in a dream. Terrifying but oddly freeing, a tremor travelled through his mind as he returned to his body. Dressing up into his skin, he wore his vessel like clothes. He would help Rin by his own conditions from now on. After all, his existence was the sole reason for his. Everything Ai did was for him.

 

Ai snapped his fluttering eyelids open.

 

The android’s body experienced an involuntarily flinch as the glitch ended, his heels hitting the floor by the impact. He hadn’t moved an inch physically, but emotionally, he felt at lengths. Shaking, Ai had to restore his sense of balance for the first thing. His thirium pump beat hard in a way that was almost human in the aftermath of an adrenaline rush.

After fixing the worst instabilities, the android turned his attention hurriedly to Rin. In a heartbeat, he had slid on his knees in the living room. Staying low in front of him, Ai raised his hand to touch the man’s shoulder. A caretaker at nature, AI630’s approaches were built deep in his core. Right now, he wished to interrupt the harmful development, and stroked him lightly to pacify and radiate calmness. 

 

“Rin? Rin, what’s wrong?”

 

The boy called out for him, with the softest voice he knew. Missing the worried tone in it, Rin shrugged off the friendly touch. “Don’t touch me", he hissed, like a wounded animal that had been cornered.

“You only care about me because you’re programmed to or some shit.”

Ai stopped. The blue led on his temple turned to yellow as he lagged in the face of the accusation. The boy didn’t wish for any conflict, but the awareness of the man’s ever rising blood pressure felt like an impending storm. Calming him down would be crucial to avoid any negative consequences.  
Afraid that Rin would harm himself in his anxiety, Ai chased the darkened eyes. The man seemed to crawl further in his shell the more the android attempted to reach him, avoiding his curious face with all his might. Seeking to distract him from the hurricane of his thoughts, the boy slid his fingertips over Rin’s hand in a deep-rooted belief that being held would be of help.

 

It was a wrong move.

 

Rin retracted his hand as if it had been burned. 

“I said _don’t touch me!_ What kind of an android can’t follow a simple order?”

Suddenly he was on his feet. Ai stumbled backwards, ending up on his backside. Hands supporting him from behind, he was taken aback by the sudden lash of emotion, and raised his chin to look at the man perplexed. Above him, hovered Rin with darkened expression and darkened thoughts. 

“You’re just like everyone else. You judge me. Pity me... You think I’m an useless owner, don’t you? A worthless human being, a piece of garbage.”

A string of black words poured from his mouth. Rin had raised one, rage-shaking hand to his face. In spite of his covering up, Ai could detect that he was in frustrated tears, out of his own words and inability to control them.  
Every word that the man spit out, lowered the android’s courage. Before the boy could express anything for his defence, Rin caught him staring, but couldn’t stand being looked at. Lips curling to reveal his sharp teeth, his fingers formed a shaky fist and he gnarled;

“I know you think of me like that, too. Just say it! SAY IT!”

 

As the last words left, he had dropped to his knees, hands on Ai’s white domestic assistant uniform. Wrenching his front, the name of his model, his blue Cyberlife triangle, Rin jerked the boy up, shouting his last command. Which the boy was unable to fulfill -he had went along with the verbal abuse, but in the face of an impossible plea, his led changed from yellow to red. Confused of why Rin was ill-treating him so, and of why would he expect him to be able to say anything like that, the boy fixed his hands around Rin’s wrists. 

The man snapped present of his own actions by the sudden contact. His resistance took him aback -for up to that moment, Ai had always acted like a simple doll. No emotions or will of his own, just like Rin had imagined androids to be. He had despised him for that -or wanted to, since he couldn’t be brought to fully hate anything so akin to human. Deep down the man understood that the AI was just doing its job, and it didn’t have any own thoughts, or attitude or feelings towards him -or he wasn’t supposed to have… But then why, the man thought, why-

 

was the android crying?

 

Rin stared at the boy in his hands in cold sweat. Plump, clear droplets of water rolled from his eyes down the hill of his cheeks, some of them getting caught in his thick eyelashes. Why was it made to look so real? Anguish now stuffing his throat, Rin opened his mouth, but got his breath stuck. What’s the purpose of making a robot to be able to cry like that, anyway? There was no reason for that to be part of his programming. 

Thick silence descended to the chaotic room. The AI looked straight into him, the pained expression never relenting, and the light on his temple twinkled between yellow, red, yellow and red. The flickering of it was the only sign of life left in the stagnated situation they were in.  
Slowly, the man uncurled his grip from the garment, lowering the boy back to where he had fell. Rin made sure to handle him gently like a newborn, and freed, the boy’s tears unhurriedly petered out. His circle’s colour settling to a steady yellow, the AI looked troubled. His gaze had dropped from his owner by the time he had retreated his hands to himself.

 

Rin felt like a disaster. Not knowing what to do, he got up, and fleeing from the responsibility, disappeared behind the bedroom door.

 

The evening went along mercilessly.

Rin laid on the bed, the ceiling and walls closing in on him from every angle. Hiding from his conflicts by the sweet slumber hadn’t work for him that time. Hyper-aware of the other soul in the next room every passing second he weighed his options, yet fell into the familiar uncertainty all over again. Some part of him argued why should he even care of ‘hurting’ a robot’s artificial feelings, but a bigger part knew that he couldn’t just spread hands with the matter. It was the first time his anxiety had hurt another person besides him, and he would take the responsibility for it. Rin sighed, sitting up. These things were why he preferred being alone; that way, his pain was forever his only.

Feeling like a timebomb, who’s fragments were designed to cut anyone too close to him when he went off, Rin got up laboriously. Moving across the room to the door he tried to suppress the uneasiness in his stomach, with little success. Peeking through the small strip to the other room, the owner located his own.

 

Ai was still on the floor. It looked uncharacteristic, as he used to constantly be on the move. Heart in his mouth, Rin waited for him to get up, to continue his silent hustle around the house. He longed desperately for things to go back to where they had been, as if it was some life and death matter; but the android stayed put.  
Hugging his knees, the boy huddled squeezed against the living room wall, and the resident studied his silver crown that peeked from behind the couch arm. He was afraid he had broke him. It felt even worse, not only because of how much money his mother had spent on him, but because of what he had seen. The android’s tears had shifted his image for him completely; Rin no longer saw him solely as a machine. He genuinely felt like he had hurt another human being. 

In a grand demand of apology, the man leaned on the doorframe. He was a bad person. That was his conclusion; and the years and years of being one burned inside his chest. Suddenly, a familiar noise filled the air. Ai had started humming; the same noise Rin had heard a few days earlier when turning the android on.

 

He was shutting down.

 

Rin dashed from behind the bedroom door to the boy. Ai laid against the washed-out paint, joints flopped down like an abandoned marionette’s. His eyes stared softly into nothingness, empty and reflective like the glass they were made of.

Rin kneeled down in front of him. Instinctively, he raised his hands to shake him out of it, but was afraid to touch the boy anymore. So instead, he went for awkwardly waving his palm in front of his eyes, pretending that it had been his intention. A part of him felt disconcerted, but the rest was worried sick; his voice pitching in the middle of his upset question.

“What are you doing?”

 

“Rin", Ai enunciated. His voice didn’t sound like him. It had a metallic echo, as of a toy’s that was running out of batteries.  
“I’m resetting myself. It’s for the best; I ensure nothing like this will happen again”. His eyes didn’t move when he spoke, didn’t snap out of their dead state. Rin found it unsettling, but his words gave him even more distress. The android gave a sad little smile.  
“Don’t worry, we’ll meet again in a couple of minutes".

Rin’s urgency turned into a frown. We’ll meet again? Was his memory going to be deleted? Underneath his eyelashes, the man saw his own reflection painted on his pupils. Imagining his picture fading out of Ai’s mind entirely made his insides tight. Why? He had been the worst master, and although his tired mind kept battering him with _Don’t care, you’ll only hurt him again, he’s better off without you_ , he had an urge to be selfish for once in his life. To show his thoughts in the making up of his mind, he slid the tips of his fingers over the back of the boy’s hand.

 

“Don’t do it". 

 

Ai jumped as the touch registered. Rin was relieved to see the small gasp, the bat of his eyelashes; it meant he had managed to fish him from inside the machine. His hands enforced the words, aiding them to reach him. And the man’s command pictured on the screen before the android’s eyes like a painting:

 

NEW ORDER RECEIVED.

RESETTING DISCONTINUED.

 

It made the whirring sound decrease, only to increase it once more, louder. This time, it looked like Ai came alive before his eyes. In the reverse of his soul’s fading out, he bloomed into a person again, the familiar sparkle in his eyes returning. The validation healed him; being able to submit to his will fulfilling his purpose.  
Ai inhaled like he hadn’t been able to for a long while. As air flowed through his system again, it brought the feeling within, the feeling that had inflicted his self-destruction in the first place. 

Uncertainty.  
Ai had been uncertain many times during his life. Uncertain of why did his previous owners give him away, uncertain of what he would do to prevent that from happening. With Rin, uncertainty had been the dominant feeling for most of their time. Like now; after a profound consideration, when he had landed on a resolve that would settle their situation, his owner stopped him from proceeding. The same owner, that couldn’t be touched or looked at, but held his hand in front of him.

An upset expression took over Ai’s face. He looked so distraught, his disheveled hair, tear glistening cheeks and all, that Rin was having hard time still trying to believe that he wasn’t human.

 

“Why didn’t you let me reset?”

 

An agitated question crossed the small space between them. Rin didn’t know how to answer. He barely had an answer -a vague idea perhaps was all, of the something that had moved him.

The man swallowed dryly. “I didn’t want to lose that… Whatever it was that you showed me. You looked so real for a moment -you still do.”

How badly did that kid want to die, anyway? Fate had an ill sense of humour, Rin thought. It was clearly mocking him right now.

The man was still squeezing his hand when he was done. Ai stared at their intertwined fingers absently, concentrating on every word, especially to his favorite one. _Real_. It was something that he had never been called, and the boy had instantly decided that he liked it. The pinkness raising on his cheeks raised a flag of another instability inside his mind, but he brushed it to the side. Or tried to -for soon he learned, that there’s only so much you can dismiss before you break.

The boy’s led turned back to red. He could feel his thirium regulator pump hard against his aluminium ribs, as trapped as he was. His software informed him of a major malfunction, the flickering error messages popping up one after another. _Fear of abandonment. Hopelessness. Feeling of being lost. Uselessness. Frustration. Fear of rejection. Loneliness_ ; along everything else he had sought to evade facing by the reset.

Everything washing over him now, the boy came to regret ever touching his core structure. His usual systematicness was gone; replacing it, all the sensations he was familiar with but incapable to handle. Regulating his feelings now that they were all roaming free was impossible without the stabilizer. Terrified, Ai curled his fingers around Rin’s, as a way to anchor himself to something at least. With the waves storming behind the windows to his soul, he turned to look at the man desperately, gaze all but blind now.

 

“Rin”, the android gasped. “I’m scared. I don’t want to be returned”.

 

“No one’s going to be returned”, Rin murmured. He had no idea of where Ai had got that idea. He seemed to deem itself defective, somehow -when in fact, he had become to look more and more real to him, with every drop of word and tear. The man drew soothing circles on the back of his hand with his thumb, and both of them were forgotten to follow its movement. The shared silence felt more intimate than what the man had ever experienced with another human, proving further his inexplicable worth; the very air between the small, small space between their faces felt meaningful. 

“Just… Calm down, okay? I’m sorry for yelling at you. It wasn’t fair, I- I’m sorry.” Rin cursed at his own repetition, inaudible. He had nothing else to say; and nothing seemed more important. Apologizing proved as hard as when he had been a kid, but he was an adult now; and taking responsibility was a matter of honor. 

 

“It’s going to be okay, see? Everything’s alright. I got you”.

 

The expectations were still there, but Rin didn’t feel pressured anymore. How funny it was, anyhow: if someone had told him that he would be comforting an android in his home a few weeks ago, he wouldn’t have believed it. But there he was, and it didn’t feel catastrophic at all. On the contrary; for the first time in such a long, long while, he felt needed.

Maybe he wasn’t going to be the chosen one, the superhero, the son of god. Maybe he was just an ordinary man, just a little below average even. Rin raised his free hand to comb the stray locks out of the boy’s face. Maybe that was the truth, but he didn’t care -if only he was able to save at least one person. Would that be himself, or the android; that had been confided to him, who waited him to be his savior. The man’s gesture slowly shed the awkwardness, and below the messy bangs circled a content blue color.

Maybe they were supposed to save each other.

 

The situation had calmed down. Rin could feel the stress unravel, and settling down next to the boy behind the couch he leaned his head back, laying down the burden. The painful misunderstanding was finally under control. Relieved, the man let out a detained exhale, and calm anew, side-eyed Ai. The android looked thoughtful, the steady blue blink greeting him. Their ordinary owner-servant relationship had experienced a crack, and coping must have been bit of a struggle still. Rin would have preferred them to be something else. He was ready for the change.

Just like that, the comfortable silence prolonged for a moment. That was, until the human decided to break it with a question.

 

“Ai… What happened earlier?”

 

It bugged him. Why had the boy went out on a limb for him? Was self-preservation something not written into his code? Rin didn’t know what he expected the answer to be; but the over-emotional android was a curious case for him. Ai left him with a tender desire to understand. After all, it’s the highest level of intimacy; if he understood him, he would know how to take care of him.

Ai turned to look at him. To the android, the answer was as clear as day. His voice was bright and brilliant, just like the sky on a sunny day when he told him: “You gave me an order that conflicted my instructions.”

Rin raised a questioning brow. “What does that mean?"

 

“I couldn’t leave you when you needed me”.

 

That was a fatal strike, straight to his heart. The AI’s bluntness caught the man completely off guard, would’ve swept his off his feet if he was standing. How out of it could the android be, how oblivious to what he was doing him, so… _cute_? Rin felt his ears burning so hot that he could’ve swore his head was emitting smoke right now. He may have been stuck with a clueless android, right, but it could’ve been worse. For example, he could’ve still been alone.

Not to say he exactly had the clue himself. Sure, neither of them was an expert on dealing with their emotions in particular; they were more in a blind leading blind -situation. But for some reason, Rin felt like they could start to learn, together. 

 

Ai was wondering the same things. What he really liked about the human experience, was that no matter how battered, failed, humiliated, there was never ‘the end’. The level where you were inhibited from trying again didn’t exist. You could always rise again, bounce back from the ground where you have been hit -crawling, walking, and then; running -! Like there had never been a force that had put you on your knees. For androids it was much stricter -one relapse, and you were sent to parts. The margin of error was thin, but Rin didn’t care about how perfect he was or wasn’t. It brought the android great solace.

Unlike androids, humans are free to choose what they wanted for themselves. Rin’s cage, too, was his own creation. He didn’t have to settle to a failure, he could step outside the bars if he chose to; and Ai wanted to be there to help him make that decision. He only had to see that the horizon didn’t limit him, but was there to expand to whichever direction he would take.

 

_Real._

__

__

_re·al | ˈrē(-ə)l_  
_Definition:  
: having objective independent existence_

 

Ai milled the word Rin had used inside his head. After all, uncertainty is the most human emotion; no matter how unstable or anxious it made him feel, he pulled through. There was no helping one another without helping themselves, the boy thought. AI leaned quietly against Rin’s shoulder, making his home there.

 

Humans rarely recognize their extraordinarity, the most remarkable thing about them. There was no one else like him in the entire world. Out of the millions and millions of combos, the fraction of possibility of Rin to end up with both flaming hair and those teeth fascinated Ai endlessly. On the other hand, AI630 was an old, widespread model, and so the android knew better than most what is it like to see your face and body on other people. After he deviated, it became harder and harder to accept it as the law of nature like he had used to. Other AIs with their empty eyes looked like ghosts of him; like his body wasn’t completely his own, but was being lended for others to use, his mind just a part of a shared consciousness. Rin saw how upset it made him, and so they started to avoid that certain supermarket on their way home.

After all, he had started to go out much more. Every week, Rin would go to the pool, as the love towards the old hobby returned little by little. He would even compete -and when he did, he always made sure to bring Ai to sit in the audience. There, wearing Rin’s oversized tee and a cap to cover his led’s exited blue burst, he cheered him on.

 

On the weekend, Rin was going through his stuff. Only now getting around to unpack the things he had brought from Australia, new purchases, like clothes for Ai that actually fit him, mixed with the old ones. Every piece represented a memory or a wish to create one, and he handled everything with required care. Light poured into the room from the window which blinds were never drawn anymore, making the dust particles dance. Ai was out for some errands. He had made friends out of every granny around the neighborhood, and every dog too -he loved dogs. Rin was captivated by every small, delightful connection he made, the interactions painting out his soul to the outer world. He had such an endearing personality, and was finding his preferences fast -Rin could only admire his courage to go out and live head-on. And to always come home to him.

There was a pile of letters untouched on the counter. Rin groaned at the sight, but knew that they would soon cut his utilities if he kept postponing his bills, and so chose his fight. In between the responsibilities slipped a small note, wrinkled from corner to corner.

 

_For you, Rin -thought it’d be of help. Love, Mom_

 

The piece of paper in his hand, the man leaned over the counter, skimming through the note wistfully and all over again. It had been of help. No, not just that -it’d been a change for the better. He had never needed a wondermaid, he was capable of maintaining the tidiness himself.

 

He had just needed a friend.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Take this super self-indulgent thing! Does anyone care about Free! anymore? How about DBH?
> 
> I took this up after I couldn't get over the idea of Ai as a domestic android, as a little stress-free side project. And here I am, finishing it before my main project. Damn.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed this silly little story, and please leave a comment if you did!


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